angband speedrun

[dos350]

any1 here try to speedrun angband?

im talking real time, not ingame turns

i think good player could achieve honestly a sub 3 hour time easily?

any thoughts, or if any1 does, please u should stream it!!

i would try but im no where near good enough,,

[HugoVirtuoso]

If you're considering on-screen recordings, use OBS Studio! It's completely free and it makes high quality videos!

[Sky]

3 hours???

Maybe in wizard mode. It takes me 1 week to get to morgoth with save scumming.

[Derakon]

I remember reading way back on RGRA about someone who beat ZAngband in a single 24-hour period, using a mindcrafter. Mindcrafters are extremely cheesy -- they have a targeted teleport, a stunning spell, a spell that damages all non-stupid monsters in LOS, etc. and it's easily possible for them to kill the Serpent of Chaos (Morgoth-analogue) without it ever seeing them.

Now, I could readily believe that modern Vanilla could be beaten faster than oldschool ZAngband, what with the smoother power curve (with a lower ceiling on monster power), access to Deep Descent, etc. but I suspect 3 hours is still very optimistic. You'd need to grind out a lot of runs for things to go well enough to achieve something like that time.

[Estie]

Hmmm speedrun. I think I would use a ranger and restart if no good bow after 10 minutes (assuming no wizard mode, which is not a given when it comes to speed running).
I suppose I would get bored fast and these things are the reason I dont like speedruns much in general.

[Derakon]

My inclination would be to run warrior and crash-dive, trusting in the RNG to work out and restarting when it doesn't. My reasoning is that warriors have the fewest things they need to reach a winnable state -- a bit more STR/DEX/CON, a good weapon or launcher, enough levels for the HP to survive nukes, and some consumables, most of which can be store-bought in extremis. They also have the strongest base potential; I can easily imagine a warrior with relatively basic gear winning fights against dlvl-40 monsters, while that's harder for any other class. Obviously they'll be playing without a lot of utility options, especially monster detection, but again, trusting the RNG to work out is sort of the nature of this kind of speedrun. If you can save 15 minutes by playing a class that doesn't know what's going on around it, at the cost of failing your run 90% of the time, that might well be a worthwhile tradeoff.

[Pete Mack]

My inclination is not to do it--it teaches bad habits. But I'd do it with small levels enabled, if I did it at all. Exploring takes a lot of time.

My inclination would be to run warrior and crash-dive, trusting in the RNG to work out and restarting when it doesn't. My reasoning is that warriors have the fewest things they need to reach a winnable state -- a bit more STR/DEX/CON, a good weapon or launcher, enough levels for the HP to survive nukes, and some consumables, most of which can be store-bought in extremis. They also have the strongest base potential; I can easily imagine a warrior with relatively basic gear winning fights against dlvl-40 monsters, while that's harder for any other class. Obviously they'll be playing without a lot of utility options, especially monster detection, but again, trusting the RNG to work out is sort of the nature of this kind of speedrun. If you can save 15 minutes by playing a class that doesn't know what's going on around it, at the cost of failing your run 90% of the time, that might well be a worthwhile tradeoff.

[Derakon]

My inclination is not to do it--it teaches bad habits. But I'd do it with small levels enabled, if I did it at all. Exploring takes a lot of time.

It teaches very risky habits, I would say. It's all in what you're optimizing for, after all. This would be very much an opposite to the old "try to win with every character, try to mitigate every risk" strategy of the 90's and early 2000's.

[wobbly]

I think I'd prefer something like a dwarf rogue over a warrior if I wanted to try speed running angband. Easier to locate good gear & still very sturdy.

[dos350]

ofcourse, wiz mode not allowed

other rules, defined by the "category" ur running

honestly i want a gg opinion here,

literally angband is pretty fast once u get on a roll,

som1 with gg "ingame turn" count wins, could apply their skill to RTA (real time attack) and get an easy world record

this is a great game to speedrun, even tho ive never tried

!!!

one primary reason its so good is there is no actual "time pressure"

everything is at ur own pace , u just got to go fast!!!!

literally this is a call to angband players, PLEASE try to speed run and post links to twitch etc, gl!

[Pete Mack]

Eh, there are two kinds of risks: calculated and blunders. Speed runs encourage the latter.

It teaches very risky habits, I would say. It's all in what you're optimizing for, after all. This would be very much an opposite to the old "try to win with every character, try to mitigate every risk" strategy of the 90's and early 2000's.

[Grotug]

It teaches very risky habits, I would say. It's all in what you're optimizing for, after all. This would be very much an opposite to the old "try to win with every character, try to mitigate every risk" strategy of the 90's and early 2000's.

I like OP's proposition. I find taking a lot of risks and burning through @s is a more fun way to play Angband than the "90s" way of playing Derakon alludes to. One of the things I really like about Angband is risk management. I believe it is a major reason I am able to complete quick games; by taking relatively "low" risks. For me a 10% chance of dying late in the game is not that high a risk. While I try to avoid taking them late, I will from time to time if I feel the pay off is worth it. I often take greater risks pre DL50 (the deeper I go, the smaller the risks I am willing to take). I take lots of high risks in the first 20 DLs. While I understand others will avoid taking 10% chance of death risk at all costs. Sometimes I feel my experiences in Angband inform my risk management in real life: if I speed here, there is an x chance a cop will be nearby, so I am willing to go 20mph over the speed limit. If I eat this morsel of food that fell on the floor (employing the 3 second rule) there is an x chance I will get sick.

Surely taking no risks in Angband isn't all that fun?

How many megabytes is 3 hours of video at 480p? I assume OBS allows setting resolution? I may try this. (I have been trying to find a good screen recording software but haven't yet found one I like).

I think I could beat Angband in 3 hours. But it would take a lot of tries. I think I would play HT Warrior. You can dive incredibly fast with that combo. My strategy would probably take major risks in the first DL30. This challenge suits my playstyle: impatient; non-analzying, brazen, reckless.

[HugoVirtuoso]

OBS is very flexible with the options. You can shrink it down to 480p high-quality settings. And 3-hours hmm...I guess a couple 100 MBs. Do a sample recording or two. Personally, I've made 1080p + 1920x1080 high quality PosChengband + heavy metal MP4 videos lasting nearly 150 minutes taking almost 2GB...not too shabby. But, definitely give OBS a try.

[Patashu]

Yes, you can set resolution and bitrate to any values you like in OBS.

I would say 3 hours of 480p footage is 1-2 gigabytes.

[Grotug]

Hmm.. maybe I'll stick with Quicktime. File > Start recording. That's about as complicated as I can handle a piece of software being. :-/

I did figure out how to set the recording resolution in OBS so as to not use up my entire minuscule HD. But figuring out how to record my screen is proving daunting. (Let alone just the window). Why is a piece of software that records the screen so complicated? :-/

So Youtube Tutorial 1 was pretty useless/poor. YT Tutorial 2 was a bit better and I figured out the very first thing I need to do in order to record my screen is select my source. Now to figure out which is my source:



I selected Display Capture but playback is still black.....

EDIT: I don't need transitions, I don't need fade.. I don't need two windows... I just wanna record mah screen. :-/ The only reason I'm not using Quicktime is because I can't set the resolution lower than my screen's. Though I suppose I could just lower the resolution of my screen and then record. I'm gonna try that.

My monitor resolutions are not very modifiable; so using Quicktime would be 4.5GB after 180minutes. I guess I'll fumble around in OBS a bit more.

EDIT: I got OBS to record my screen. Now my next hurdle (which Quicktime has no qualms about) is that I use the zoom feature on the Mac which allows you to zoom in on the screen by holding down ctrl and using the trackpad to zoom in. I do this because I cannot for the life of me figure out how to have the main Angband window take up my entire screen (I have an 11" screen so normal windowed play is not feasible).

So to get around this I just zoom in on the window and then play the game. But OBS ignores the zoom, recording, what it probably thinks to be the "true" screen rather than the zoomed in portion of the screen. So I get a video output that has the game take up 1/4 of the screen when playing the video back.

EDIT: So I used OBS's transform feature and centered the window and then stretched the window. The preview shows that angband now takes up the whole screen. But when I record, the ouptut is blackness... (nothing recorded).

EDIT: I restarted my computer and now it's working. I guess I should eat something before playing 3 hours nonstop. Thanks for the software recommendation! Glad I figured it out.

https://youtu.be/czxxlM0SynU#t=25s

https://youtu.be/czxxlM0SynU#t=14m5s things get a little more exciting.